Somewhere between a winter vacation, a Discovery Channel special, and a rock concert, you’ll find a Warren Miller movie. This year, his 54th annual film Journey made a stop at the Palace Theatre in Albany for a screening near the midpoint of their nationwide tour. For anyone that doesn’t already know, Warren Miller directs and narrates ski films that provide viewers with great extreme sports, mixed cultures on various worldwide locations, all set to a soundtrack that has almost as much energy as the film itself.
The movie takes its journey to some of the greatest pockets of snow on four of the seven continents. Filmed by 19 camera crews, it features 73 world class athletes skiing, snowboarding, and doing whatever other extreme sport they can perform for the camera. Watching the film only leaves you wishing that you were the 74th person out there with them.
The first sequence is a rare behind the scenes studio shot of Miller at the microphone beginning his narrative commentary. Something very few 78 year olds can pull off, or anyone for that matter, you’ll hear Miller saying “Let’s get the freak on,” and then the film immediately jumps to a montage of big airs and big wrecks.
From there the real journey begins. Starting in Portillo, Chile, you’ll see members of the U.S. freestyle team take it to the Chilean backcountry. Then to unwind at the end of the day they build a jump on the roof of the mountain restaurant and find the “recipe for your siesta,” as Miller puts it, as they fly over patrons eating outside. After the South American venture, we travel to heavenly Lake Tahoe and visit with ski legend Glen Plake.
After leaving Plake, the film goes to the crew in the Aspen highlands and documents the proud, and sometimes underappreciated, life of the backcountry Ski Patrollers. Then, jumping halfway around the world you’ll find some skiing in Chamonix, France followed by some backcountry snowboarding with the Burton snowboard team.
Miller then goes a little closer to home at his own Yellowstone Club in Montana where you see him ski, and narrates “anyone that tells you they can still ski as well when they’re over 50 years old as they could when they were 20— sure was a lousy skier when they were 20.”
The journey continues onward to Colorado, Alaska, Morocco, British Columbia, and Italy to see some terrain park riding, kayaking, tele-marking, barefoot waterskiing behind a snowmobile, giant salmon fishing, and of course more of the backcountry.
Following those segments, one of the last sequences is set in Verbier, Switzerland for one of the most incredible scenes. There, from a helicopter over a Swiss mountain, Loïc Jean-Albert “waits until the chopper’s going 50 miles an hour over a 30-degree ski slope. When he’s about a thousand feet above the summit, he jumps. When he’s accelerated to about 80 mph and he’s only 15 feet above the snow, he becomes a human glider” as stated so eloquently by the narrator.
The last segment is a tribute to fallen extreme snowboarder Craig Kelly who was killed in an avalanche in British Columbia last year. With “I Am Mine” by Pearl Jam laying the foundation to the closing, we are left with a few last words—“Set some time aside now and join me, ‘cause next year I’ll be going to a lot of new places. I’m Warren Miller—hope to see you next year: same time, same place. Thank you and good night.” I for one will see him again next year for whatever journey he will take me on.
